Hacker News: bigstrat2003

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "Windows 1.0 and the WinAPI, 40 Years Later"

bigstrat2003 — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 16:18:04 +0000

Yes, that was removed with the 64-bit versions of Windows. My understanding is because they were using a compatibility layer to run 16-bit apps, and with 64-bit Windows they changed that compatibility layer to run 32-bit apps. But I'm not a Windows internals expert so I could be mistaken.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "Windows 1.0 and the WinAPI, 40 Years Later"

bigstrat2003 — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 16:15:55 +0000

To be fair, that is not a backwards compatibility problem and is because the games were designed with an unnecessary reliance on a third party service to run.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "No, everyone is not using AI for everything"

bigstrat2003 — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 16:09:14 +0000

I don't think AI has any real value for software development, personally. The quality just isn't there, unless you invest so much effort that you may as well have written it yourself. But the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, and even though I think the industry will get over the idiocy of having LLMs write software, there's no telling how long that will take. So it's a scary time to work in tech even if I think the trend will ultimately reverse.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "No, everyone is not using AI for everything"

bigstrat2003 — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 15:54:20 +0000

Software engineers aren't even all using AI, contrary to frequent claims here that they are. There are very many who have tried it, found it didn't add value to their work, and aren't using it unless FOMO-driven managers force them to.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "The American World Cup Introduced Ad Breaks–and Everyone Hates It"

bigstrat2003 — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 06:44:10 +0000

The stat you read is flat out inaccurate. There are 60 minutes where the clock is running, and the vast majority of that is with the ball live and in play. I would say something like 45+ minutes out of the 60. Also, in fairness I've been to a couple of NFL games, and the commercial breaks tend to happen when the game clock is paused by the flow of the game anyway (team calls timeout, referees are reviewing a play, and so on). It's uncommon for the game at the stadium to be stopped waiting for the broadcasters to show their commercials.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "Leaving Mozilla"

bigstrat2003 — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 05:10:22 +0000

I don't believe that for one second, and neither should you. Every single CEO who gets fired is made to "voluntarily" resign.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "The state of building user interfaces in Rust"

bigstrat2003 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 23:10:34 +0000

> I can't think of what I'd want a native UI solution for.

So that your software is actually pleasant to use for your users. UIs built on HTML universally suck compared to native UIs.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "I Am Not a Reverse Centaur"

bigstrat2003 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 03:05:41 +0000

> It’s been a year and agents and models have improved dramatically.

It's been years of AI advocates saying that. It has never yet been true, and it isn't true today either.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "I Am Not a Reverse Centaur"

bigstrat2003 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:46:10 +0000

> No one is sharing their AI stuff here asking you to be impressed.

That actually happens all the time on Show HN these days.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "I Am Not a Reverse Centaur"

bigstrat2003 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:44:52 +0000

When LLMs are remotely comparable to compilers, your analogy might hold water. But in the world of today, it holds none.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "I Am Not a Reverse Centaur"

bigstrat2003 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:40:09 +0000

Yeah, there's something pathetic about being proud of something you didn't actually get challenged by making. Like, I love building Lego sets. It's relaxing, it's fun, and I enjoy having the completed model to put on a shelf and look at. But I would never in a million years say I was proud of those Lego models, or that I had a sense of accomplishment. That wouldn't be merited.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office"

bigstrat2003 — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:03:21 +0000

The article doesn't mention parties because it's irrelevant. A bad bill is bad on its merits, not because of who has brought it about.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "A Call to Action: Stop the FCC's KYC Regime"

bigstrat2003 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 23:24:34 +0000

There's nothing loony about not having Facebook or a phone. Nobody really gives a damn, I promise you. What is silly is trying to disallow everyone else from having something because you don't want it.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in ""Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?""

bigstrat2003 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 18:28:40 +0000

> there will be a point where we will not trust human input without counter check by AI

That's nonsense. There is zero reason to believe that AI (with the current techniques) will ever become reliable enough to let it do its own thing, let alone better than a human. It's been years of development and you still can't trust it to get basic facts correct, not even "well it's better than it used to be". Saying it'll replace humans in 5-10 years is a fantasy (or a prediction that people are stupid enough to fall for hype, I guess).

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "Lines of code got a better publicist"

bigstrat2003 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 05:04:25 +0000

AI makes people think they are being productive, but in reality is a drain on productivity.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "Claude Fable is relentlessly proactive"

bigstrat2003 — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 02:51:18 +0000

They really aren't.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "Software is made between commits"

bigstrat2003 — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:24:26 +0000

Thank you for that link! Looks like it fixes all of my annoyances with Zed; I'll have to try it out.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future"

bigstrat2003 — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:37:54 +0000

I'm not a huge "run everything in a container" guy, but Nextcloud is one of those things I absolutely will always run in a container. It's too much of a beast for me to have any desire to try to manage package versions and fixing it if something breaks.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future"

bigstrat2003 — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:35:01 +0000

That is not a compelling reason to overhaul a UI (which is something that should rarely, if ever, be done). If it works and is pleasant to use, what it looks like is of no consequence.

New comment by bigstrat2003 in "Building an HTML-first site doubled our users overnight"

bigstrat2003 — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 03:08:46 +0000

The push to have everything be served over HTTPS is absolutely insane. Very few things actually need to be served securely. But sadly, browser makers don't give a damn about actual benefits for the users, but rather shove their out of touch ideas about what the Web should be down everyone's throats.